


Afterwards

by spacestationtrustfund



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, oh well here goes, scrying: don't try this at home kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5565889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Gansey Ronan was a stained-glass window made by the colour-blind: any fool with half a heart could see it was meant to be beautiful, but the colours were missing. (Ronan and Adam deal with what comes after.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterwards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirtybinary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/gifts).



> DID I NOT PROMISE ANGST? DID I NOT? I ALWAYS DELIVER THE PAIN.

 

“So what did you see?” asked Ronan.

He was trying to be nonchalant and casual, but Adam caught how careful and measured his voice was, and knew. Ronan, who never did anything carefully, spoke with deliberate precision.

“I don’t know,” Adam said.

That morning, before the sun had woken completely, when the sky was still that strange, soft colour between night and morning, Adam had filled a cheap plastic cereal bowl with water from the tap and attempted, while Ronan held onto his hands as an anchor, to scry. Adam wasn’t sure exactly what he had been looking for—some sort of solution, he suspected, but whatever it was, he couldn’t find it. Once again, he was useless.

Ronan shrugged and kept picking at the bands around his wrists. Once, Adam’s lack of explanation would not have been enough; Ronan would have said something like, _Well, figure it out then, Parrish,_ or _Then who does know?_ or _Are you blind as well as deaf, now?_ But he only shrugged, as if none of it mattered.

Adam thought he would have preferred that Ronan to this dull, listless copy. This was a Ronan who did not care for magic, who had no energy to fight back. This was a Ronan without Gansey.

 _Don’t think about it,_ Adam reminded himself, as the familiar spike of pain pierced his stomach. _Don’t think about any of it. Take it one step at a time._

“What time is it?” Adam asked, when he could speak again. This had been a joke amongst them, since the day in Cabeswater when Gansey had asked the time and Ronan, savage and unreal, had replied, _Time for Rich Boy to get a watch._ Gansey, perplexed, not understanding the joke, had said, _But I have a watch. It isn’t working._

It did not feel like a joke, now. It felt like a cruelty.

Ronan did not say it was time for Adam to get a watch. He turned over his cell phone so that Adam could read the display. _9:54._ Still too early to leave. It was not a federal holiday—stores were still open, people still went about their businesses—but Adam thought maybe it ought to be. It seemed like something that someone like Gansey would warrant.

“Thank you,” Adam said, a beat too late.

He considered sitting down on the too-thin mattress next to Ronan, but his legs were unwilling to move him where he wanted to go. He was such a broken creature, permanently damaged, a magician afraid of his own magic. He could not do anything right.

“God, I’m fucking sick of this,” Ronan said abruptly. He stood, pocketed his cell phone, and grabbed Adam’s hand and pulled him towards the door. “I have to do something. Come on. We’re going.”

“Where?” Adam asked. He was relieved to see Ronan acting like Ronan again, but was worried that if he talked to anyone else, he would shatter, and people would be vaccuming tiny shards of Adam Parrish out of the carpet for months to come.

“Somewhere not here,” was all that Ronan offered in terms of explanation. Adam understood. He had only been relieved, not confused, when Ronan had shown up at his apartment at St. Agnes the night before, shirt untucked and eyes some place far away. He understood that there was too much of Gansey left at Monmouth for Ronan to hope to get any sleep there.

Adam had expected Ronan to detonate, as he often did. He had expected Ronan to release the part of himself he had been keeping bridled for Gansey’s sake. Adam had not expected Ronan to shrink into this negative image of himself, a crooked, broken boy with a soul too heavy for his body. Adam had needed Ronan to be the stronger one, the fighter, the survivor; he had not anticipated Ronan to need the same from him.

Ronan drove the BMW the same way he always did, though; it seemed the part of him that existed in regards to cars was not daunted the way the rest of him was. His hands were fierce on the wheel, the gearshift. His knuckles were white from gripping so hard. He was electric.

They drove away from St. Agnes— _what use is God if He cannot undo this—_ and for a wild, illogical moment Adam thought they might be going to get Blue at 300 Fox Way. But Ronan changed lanes and kept driving, onto the parkway and towards the mountains.

This, too, held too much of Gansey: The trees seemed to whisper through impossibly green leaves—that was days spent lounging in Cabeswater. The BMW shuddered as it climbed and wove around terrifying curves—that was the Pig stalling. Shadows dappled the road, filtered through cross-hatched branches—that was quiet nights studying for Aglionby. The forest was too much to bear; it screamed of Gansey.

Ronan turned the BMW around and looked over his shoulder to complete the turn, and then he stopped. Adam saw him stop. It was just a moment, but it seemed to last forever, that instant when Ronan gave up completely.

Somehow, that moment was the catalyst.

Adam unbuckled his seat belt. He grabbed the transmission and shifted the car into park, so that they were sitting still in the middle of the road, half-in the opposite lane. Adam crawled halfway out of his seat and took Ronan’s face in his hands, turning Ronan’s head so that Ronan was looking at him.

 _“Ronan,”_ Adam said. The word was just an exhale, just an escaping rush of air. “Ronan, look at me. Hey. Keep looking at me. Come on.”

His eyes were empty. That was the most frightening part of it all, Adam thought. The terrible emptiness in his eyes. They were like Noah’s, not alive but not quite dead, either. Hollow. Lifeless.

Ronan made a small, choked sound, the cry of something fundamentally injured. He reached out and pulled Adam to him, pressing them both awkwardly and uncomfortably between the gearshift and seats and steering wheel. Adam clutched Ronan’s shoulders and heard his ragged breaths.

“I couldn’t stop it,” Ronan managed. He was shaking. “I couldn’t do a damn thing. All the shit I can do, and I can’t do the one thing that matters most. What good am I then, Adam? What good _am_ I? I can’t do a fucking thing.”

“It’s not your fault,” Adam said; _it’s mine._ “Ronan, it’s not your fault. You can’t blame yourself for it.”

“It’s always my fault,” Ronan said, but he still didn’t sound angry, only impossibly weary. “What’s the point of magic”—his voice broke, and he laughed, hollow and clipped—“if I can’t use it to save people? That’s what you did, what Blue does, what— It’s only me, who doesn’t do a damn thing to help. I’m as bad as Kavinsky.”

“You’ve used it to do a lot of good,” Adam said, his mouth against Ronan’s neck. He knew his accent was evident, but he couldn’t make himself care. “You saved your mother, and Matthew. And Cabeswater—and me. You’ve done plenty.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It’s never enough,” Adam whispered. He closed his eyes and inhaled Ronan’s scent: metal and leather and sweat. He wondered if his pillows and second-hand sheets still smelled like Ronan. “You can’t make it be enough.”

Ronan made another small sound, like a sob. “I’m the fucking Greywaren. I should be able to bring him back. I’ve done it before, I—he—it’s not working.” He drew in a shaky breath. “Sometimes I think it’s a punishment, that I lose everybody I love, because of . . . what I am.”

“The dreaming part?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said into Adam’s collarbone. “I already did the penance for _this_ part.”

“Well, you haven’t lost me,” Adam said. His heart had already been broken, but he was continuously learning that it could always be crushed into smaller and smaller pieces, into a powder so fine that you were picking it out of your bare feet for weeks after. “You’re not gonna lose me.”

It was not the time for kissing, not exactly, but Adam couldn’t come up with another way to drag Ronan back into the present, short of Cabeswater, and that seemed uncouth for a boy whose relationship with the magical forest was already stretched to the breaking point. When Adam’s grander, wilder magics failed, he spoke with his hands and his mouth and his body, and Ronan, who so rarely listened to anyone or anything, listened to him then.

Ronan’s lips were hot and fevered, and his heartbeat was as fast as that of a prey animal. Adam thought, mindlessly, of the day at the Barns with the field mice, of holding a tiny alive thing against his cheek and feeling its rapid pulse. How far away that seemed, now; how living and foolish they had been, then.

Ronan kissed like he was drowning, like he was starving. It was altogether terrifying and intoxicating, and Adam could never get enough. He pushed Ronan back against the seat and kissed him again, his hands holding Ronan’s shoulders, fisted in his shirt, sliding over the back of his neck.

Adam had yet to come up with a better way to remind himself that he was still alive. Pain and kisses, so far, were his two strongest ties to corporeality. He let his mouth travel down Ronan’s neck and across his collarbone, then twisted his body and buried his face in Ronan’ chest.

They were silent and still for a long moment. Ronan held Adam against his chest, and dropped his chin onto the top of Adam’s head. He would do that sometimes when they were standing, to emphasise the few inches’ difference in height, but now it was unconscious and unguarded.

“Are you crying?” Ronan asked, finally. There was a catch in his voice that suggested that he might be, instead. “Because normally people who make out with me don’t end up crying, so I want to know if I did something wrong.”

Adam laughed shakily. “I’m not crying,” he said. “I’m not crying, but it feels like I should be. How many people have cried after kissing you?”

“You would be the first, Parrish,” Ronan said grandly. He tangled his fingers in Adam’s hair, something he had begun to do after Adam had complained he could not return the favour. “That’s you, always first in everything. Normally it’s more like, _Damn, can I do that again._ ”

“Right,” Adam said, dubious. He knew he was being distracted, but he welcomed it. “How many people have you made out with, exactly? And Chainsaw doesn’t count.”

Ronan made a sound like he should have been laughing, but had stopped in the middle of the act. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out, Parrish.”

“I am finding out,” Adam said. “I’m asking right now.”

“So you are,” Ronan agreed. A little bit more of _Ronan_ was back, and something inside Adam thrilled violently to realise and to acknowledge it. He wondered how long it would last. He wondered how to keep in in place. Post-Gansey Ronan was a stained-glass window made by the colour-blind: any fool with half a heart could see it was meant to be beautiful, but the colours were missing.

“Do you want to go back?” Adam asked. He sat back in his own seat, but found Ronan’s hand and held it. “I could drive.”

Adam had offered to drive the BMW only once before when Ronan hadn’t been teaching him how to drive a stick shift, after that first, terrible night, when Ronan’s hands had been shaking so badly Adam had worried that they would end up two lanes away from where they were supposed to be. Ronan had only gripped the wheel tighter and snapped, _No one else drives this fucking car until I’m dead._ He had been angry, then, before the numbness had set in.

Now Ronan did not say anything about the car. He passed his left hand over his face, his right still holding Adam’s. “I keep thinking about that stupid cereal-box model he did of Henrietta,” Ronan said. He shook his head helplessly. “He was so fucking into that shit, and now he’ll never finish it. There’s so much else I should be thinking of, but. I’m not.”

“We could finish it, someday,” Adam offered, but already Ronan was shaking his head.

“No. It wouldn’t be the same,” Ronan said. He looked down at their hands, tangled together, and something seemed to snap back into place inside of him. “Come on. We should get back.”

 

 

They drove back down to Henrietta, to St. Agnes, and Adam curled against the window and watched Ronan through half-closed eyes while pretending he wasn’t watching. They didn’t speak as they drove back into the town. It was a different Henrietta than it had been only days, weeks, months ago: Henrietta was Gansey’s kingdom, and a kingdom was nothing without its king. Now the city had lost its allure of grandeur and magic, and revealed itself to be a small, shabby Virginia town full of small, shabby buildings. It was nothing special.

“Are you gonna stay here?” Adam asked, hesitating on the bottom step of the staircase. Ronan had practically lived at St. Agnes for a week, then left. Adam still didn’t know where he had gone—not Monmouth, not 300 Fox Way, not the Barns—but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. Then Ronan had shown up again and asked to stay.

Adam had accepted without question, of course. He could tell himself it was because it was easier to keep an eye on Ronan when Ronan was staying under the same roof and sleeping in the same bed as Adam was, but in truth the strongest reason was that Adam didn’t want to be alone. Blue would have been another outlet, but Adam didn’t want to hear her version of comfort when she needed it for herself. Ronan did not give comfort. It was stupidly reassuring.

“Yeah,” Ronan said, not meeting Adam’s eyes. “If you don’t mind, then yeah. I’m gonna stay here. I can’t . . . I don’t think I can go back there yet. Not now.”

Adam understood. As the only living resident of 1136 Monmouth Avenue, Ronan was technically entitled to legal ownership of Monmouth Manufacturing. But without Noah and without Gansey, Monmouth’s empty, looming, defunct-factory vibe was not anything close to a home. The Barns would have been a better substitute, but at the moment Adam didn’t doubt that certain old ghosts that had slumbered there were being unpleasantly reawakened.

“You can stay as long as you need to,” Adam said, opening the door to the apartment. “But you might want to consider getting a better place to sleep on, if this is going to be more of a long-term thing.”

“I don’t mind it,” Ronan said, sitting down gingerly on the flimsy mattress with an exaggerated sigh. He made a show of arranging the pillows and lying down. “It’s comfy.”

“It is _not,_ ” Adam said. He folded his arms. “Maybe I’ll make you buy me an actual bed, then,” he added thoughtfully, knowing he never would. There was something comforting about having bought something with your own money that Adam couldn’t give up.

Ronan grinned up at him, a grin that was just a shade closer to the boy he had used to be, before everything else went to shit. There were many different versions of Ronan, and this one was one of Adam’s favourites, the one he didn’t have to share with anybody else. “Only if you let me sleep in it.”

“Don’t be stupid. Did you finish all the homework we got from yesterday?”

Aglionby, out of respect for the deceased, had cancelled all classes for the first week; Adam suspected the quantity of time had something to do with the fact that Gansey was regarded as more of an equal than another student by the majority of the faculty. Not just anyone would have garnered a week’s worth of time off, but that was Gansey—commanding respect even from the grave.

It sickened Adam, to think of words like _deceased_ and _grave_ in regards to Gansey.

But classes were back in session, and work was expected to be turned in on time. Several teachers had already made a clear point to state that, although a tragedy had indeed occurred, attendance was still mandatory and homework was still obligated. In addition, they had reminded Mr. Parrish that, in light of this loss, he would now be moved to the spot of valedictorian for his class, a position previously occupied by Gansey.

Adam did not want any recognition in light of anything, if it had been awarded because of Gansey’s death. He thought of Gansey calling him late at night, exhaustion plainly written into his careful voice, to review Latin verb declensions. He thought of Gansey painstakingly checking his calculus notes against Adam’s. He thought of Gansey despairing over how he could possibly drag Ronan through exams. That was Adam’s job, now.

“Of course I didn’t finish it,” Ronan said.

“Well, you should finish it, then.”

Ronan sat back up and rolled his eyes methodically, a practised gesture. “I did start it, though, if that helps.”

“What didn’t you do? We could study—we need to study for exams, anyway.”

“Fucking exams,” Ronan agreed, with typical good humour. He lifted his wrist to his mouth as if he would chew on his bracelets, then changed his mind. “I can’t believe sometimes we’re almost done with Aglionby for good. Only exams, and then we’re out of it.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed.

He and Ronan hadn’t talked about it, but Adam knew the impracticalities of their position. Adam was going to leave Henrietta as soon as possible for college at some Ivy League university where all the textbooks had impossibly long and scholarly titles and the students all came from rich, privileged families familiar with terms such as _socio-political revolution_ and _trickle-down effect._ Ronan was going to stay in Henrietta, go to a local university if he went at all, and perpetuate the Barns. Long-term wasn’t even a possibility for them.

Adam hadn’t envisioned this to be a problem before, his leaving Henrietta. He would integrate himself into the class of people he wanted to emulate, and leaving Henrietta behind would be like escaping fully from his chains. It had been easy to think about, back then, when getting out had been the only thing on his mind.

Now his position was similar, but even more difficult: Gansey’s echo lingering in every corner threatened to chase him away from the dusty, empty little town, and Ronan threatened to make him come even closer to wanting to stay in the place he had regarded as his prison for so long.

He wanted to go. He wanted to stay. He was being pulled apart, and being ripped in half was not as romantic as it had been martyred into seeming.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been four years,” Adam said. Of course, for him it hadn’t been that long. He felt like an imposter: again. Exhibit A, Adam Parrish, deceiver. “I guess it seems like, after all that . . . it doesn’t seem like it’s been long enough.”

“I, for one,” Ronan said, “am glad that it’ll be done soon. I don’t want to spend another goddamn minute at that shithole.”

Adam knew it was because of Gansey. Everything was. There was very little he hated more than seeing the fake-sympathetic faces of the boys who pretended to grieve while secretly hoping they would be the ones to take Gansey’s place as the teachers’ favourite—that was how the world of the upper class worked, and Adam despised it.

The boys whose mourning was sincere were almost worse, in some ways—Adam was skilled at picking out the polished and air-brushed insincerity, so the honesty always came as a shock. He had forgotten how stupidly _liked_ Gansey had been, how incredibly fond everyone had been of him.

Having to share Gansey, even in death, was unbearable.

He wanted to go. He wanted to stay.

There was almost enough that he would miss about Aglionby to make up for the sleepless nights that resulted in disorder and dark circles, the early-morning or late-night shifts that left grease and gasoline under his fingernails no matter how hard he tried to clean them, the long hours spent studying until the facts and figures were just black lines swirling in his head—an insomniac’s studying sessions.

But if Adam had used Aglionby as a stepping stone _with_ Gansey, _without_ Gansey only lent the school a sombre air of being _not enough._ He needed to get out, so that maybe he would have a chance of being a little bit better.

So he knew well enough that Ronan was probably telling the truth, or at least what Ronan believed to be the truth. _Not lying_ did not automatically signify _telling the truth._

“You don’t go to classes, anyway,” Adam said. “The only difference about after graduation would be that you would have an excuse to do nothing. And that you couldn’t go even if you wanted.” Ad if Ronan would ever willingly _want_ to do school.

Instead of answering, Ronan stretched out his legs and changed the subject. Adam realised that they would probably not get any studying done. “You’re sure you didn’t see anything helpful when you were scrying earlier?”

Adam considered. Scrying was difficult when you had more than one thing on your mind—intention was an important factor in seeing what you wanted to see. And allowing your soul to detach from your body became much more complicated when you wanted to keep your soul in your body at the same time. Conflicting interests did not make for successful magic.

“I saw something,” Adam admitted. “I’m not sure what it was. It’s . . . it’s like there’s this black shadow or something that keeps getting in the way, and blocking the view. I think it’s to prevent me from seeing . . .” Noah. Glendower. Cabeswater. _Gansey._

“Great. Just what we need,” Ronan said unhelpfully. “Another fucking mystery.”

He grabbed his backpack from where he’d left it (on one of the plastic bins that held all of Adam’s clothes) and tugged out one of his tattered notebooks. Adam could only tell them apart by the colour; the subject didn’t stay in only one notebook but skipped around from one to another, depending on which one had been closest when Ronan had grabbed it out of his bag. This time it was the red one.

Ronan flipped it open. He had doodled tiny ravens and flowers and cars in every margin, and sometimes his haphazard drawings skittered over into his notes and took over. There was as little calculus as there was free space. Ronan raised his eyebrows. “Here we go, again.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. Ronan tossed his textbook onto the mattress, and Adam let himself fall backwards and held the book open above him.

Where would he be in a year? Two years? Adam had sent applications off to various colleges, the result of a weekend’s endeavour spent borrowing Gansey’s computer and creamy, expensive paper, but he didn’t know where that would get him. Where would Ronan be?

Wherever he wanted to be, probably. If Ronan stayed in Henrietta, it was because something about it had captured his attention—Matthew, the Barns, Monmouth, what was left of Cabeswater. He would only do something of his own volition.

Adam could understand that.

Ronan still sat on the edge of the mattress, staring down at his hands as if he expected to find some answer written here instead of in his notes. In the wavering afternoon light, the bare skin of his arms looked golden. He looked unbreakable. It was another one of those little deceptions that Ronan didn’t count as lies.

“Hey,” Adam said. He stretched out one leg and kicked Ronan lightly in the side. “Come on.”

“You’re such a sucker for attention, Parrish,” Ronan said, but he didn’t sound angry. He wrapped his fingers around Adam’s ankle and ran his fingernails down the side of Adam’s foot, smirking when Adam shivered and tried to jerk his leg away. Ronan lowered his voice and looked away. “But I’m a sucker for you, so I guess we’re even.”

“Come over here,” Adam said, moving closer to the wall to make room.

Ronan did. He lied down facing Adam, close enough that Adam felt his warmth but not close enough to touch. He raised his hand to face height and laid it on Adam’s cheek. Adam closed his eyes against the touch. It was not okay. It would not be okay. Adam could not lie to Ronan, the persistently honest, and say it would be okay.

Falling in love with Blue Sargent had been like a lightswitch that had been flicked on, illuminating the room with a bright, pleasant light. Falling in love with Ronan Lynch was like the strike of a match, the terrible, holy luminescence of flames. It didn’t matter how much the fire lit up a room; you were still going to get burned.

Adam had all kinds of scars. Physical ones, mental ones, ones where the bruises hadn’t faded but left ugly marks on his skin. He couldn’t hear out of his left ear. He still flinched when touched unexpectedly. There were scars on his hands and arms from working at the mechanic’s. His skin was a ruin of old wounds. Adam figured he could bear adding burn marks to the list.

“Are you ever going to go back to Monmouth?” Adam whispered, letting the book fall onto his face. He didn’t open his eyes, but he could picture the expression Ronan wore. Ronan was more predictable than he liked to think. “Technically it’s your now.”

“Eventually, yeah,” Ronan said. He moved his fingers down Adam’s jaw to his collarbone. “It’s just so fucking empty. Like a skeleton. Or a tomb.” He laughed, full of asperity and derision. “What a tradition this is. The Barns, Monmouth . . . if only there was a way that didn’t involve anyone actually fucking dying.”

It wasn’t funny. It was the opposite of funny. None of it was funny. Adam opened his eyes. “Well, you won’t get this place.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but it was even less funny than anything else had been. Ronan’s face twisted. “Don’t talk like that,” he said, low and furious. “Don’t treat it like it’s some sort of fucking joke to you, Parrish. Adam. Because it’s not a joke to me.”

“Sorry,” Adam whispered.

“If you die,” Ronan said, “I really only have one thing left to live for.”

“Matthew?” Adam guessed.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. He moved his hand away from Adam’s face, but before Adam could miss the touch, Ronan had grabbed his hand. He pulled Adam’s arm over his shoulders and turned so that they were facing the same direction. Adam pushed Ronan’s shirt up over his shoulders, and Ronan made a sound that was something like a sigh.

Adam had seen the entirety of Ronan’s tattoo only once before in daylight, but he thought it looked different now. Inked on Ronan’s skin was a tangled intricacy of spreading vines, knives, feathers, beaks, flowers, eyes, wings, bones. Adam traced a twisting of lines, probably some Celtic symbol, and a black bird that reminded him of Chainsaw. It still shocked him, even now, that someone like Ronan was his to touch.

“I think I’m gonna try scrying again tomorrow,” Adam said, just to have something to say. When no words filled the space where Gansey had been, it was unbearable. “I want to try and see if I can see . . . something else.”

“You should talk to Blue,” Ronan said, his words muffled by the pillow. “She can make it easier for you to see.”

“It’s worked pretty well with you,” Adam said.

“You don’t want to talk to Blue,” Ronan guessed. “You can’t avoid her forever, Parrish. That’s a dick move.”

He was right, of course. Sometimes it disconcerted Adam, how well Ronan knew him. “I don’t want to make her feel even worse.” Blue had dealt with everything in the way she always did: by becoming fiercer and stronger than ever. She was a bundle of ferocity crammed into five feet of wild-haired strange fashion tastes. Adam had nothing to offer her.

“Everyone needs friends sometimes,” Ronan said. “I’m shit at being comforting. Go see the midget.”

“Will you come with?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ronan said, which could have meant _Of course I will; if you want me there I’ll be there_ or _I wouldn’t do that to Blue; I’ll only make it worse._ Neither was helpful. Neither was what Adam wanted to hear.

Of course, that was who they were: the ugly truths were far better than the pretty lies.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: spacestationtrustfund.


End file.
